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I had kodi running on rpi's for a while, but then recently switched to jellyfin. Either will get the job done, but jellyfin has been a lot less janky for me.
Pi3 and below don't have codec hardware, which means video is decoded in software, and the cpu isn't very powerful at that. Pi3 got me h264 at 1080p, but I had to replace it since anything more was a slideshow. If your stuff is h265/AV1, minimum is pi4.
Running the Jellyfin client on the Pi should be no problem. It's a bit underpowered for running the server, though. If you have only one device, Kodi is probably your best bet. Otherwise any old PC you have lying around will do as a Jellyfin server.
Otherwise any old PC you have lying around will do as a Jellyfin server.
Unless you want to be able to do on-the-fly transcoding for clients that are picky about codecs (e.g. because they're only fast enough to decode ones with dedicated hardware support). In that case, you're going to want your Jellyfin server to have a GPU with decent hardware encoding support.
(I learned this the hard way: my Jellyfin server is running in a VM on Proxmox and I haven't figured out GPU passthrough yet, so some of my media fails to play on clients like Roku because the codec isn't supported.)
This is a good point, the client is an important consideration. My setup is the similar, with Jellyfin running in docker in an Ubuntu Proxmox VM (host system CPU is an i7-6700t), but the client is an Nvidia Shield Pro, which so far has been able to handle everything Jellyfin throws at it, with the exception of AV1.
OK maybe not any old PC. But I think pretty much any 8th gen Intel processor or higher will do it without a GPU. I run it on an N100 right now and it works very well for hardware transcoding.
An N100 isn't "without a GPU;" it's got Intel UHD Graphics built in -- moreover, even though it's a pretty cheap chip it's also a pretty new one, and thus supports recent video codecs.
Meanwhile, my AMD Ryzen 5 3600 does not work for transcoding, even though it's way faster than an N100, because it's not an APU.
You've only proven my point that having a GPU with hardware transcoding support is what makes all the difference.
OK OK, I meant without a discrete GPU.
The only thing you have to watch out for is that the Pi on its own is not a great device to transcode natively on, so you're using the client devices to be able to watch content on the Pi. So be wary of which media files you download and what your devices support.
https://dietpi.com/ has hand tailored images for many small devices including the pis and a robust installer with a wizard for many things including a media center setup.
if you configure a jellyfin server (not on the pi) to share your media to most pi devices using h264 it should work well. (basically, its questionable if the pi can handle transcoding on its own, so its best to do it ahead of playback or from another box)
Kodi
Nice. Seem like there are a few pi images tailored around kodi.
Libreelec is the easiest and most direct right now. Very stable, and they release timely updates with new versions of Kodi. Use a pi5 if possible. The extra compute and hevc decoders does help with media.
There is a great youtube and sponsorblock addon as well. Completely ad free youtube.
Your can directly mount nfs shares in your kodi client if you like, but Id recommend setting up jellyfin as the media server you host as a standalone server. It has its own native Kodi app to sync media updates and media state. Super clean way to organize, update and index all your media, and then view it in Kodi.
I think Jellyfin is generally the go to FOSS suggestion. Are you looking to stream 4k content?
Jellyfin is a server and client apps, not a whole OS. For a client device like a Raspberry Pi, you need to be running a Jellyfin client app on top of something else like LibreELEC.
Not sure if my TV can handle 4k, but I might as well go for "yes" in the name of future proofing my setup.